Equus caballus Linnaeus, 1758

Peter Grubb, 1993, Order Perissodactyla, Mammal Species of the World (2 nd Edition), Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 369-372 : 369

Equus caballus Linnaeus, 1758 . Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1:73.

TYPE LOCALITY: "Habitat in Europa" (= Sweden?); based on domestic horses .

DISTRIBUTION: In classical antiquity, wild horses said to have ranged as far west as Spain; into the late 18th Century, from Poland and Russian Steppes east to Turkestan and Mongolia; wild population survived (at least until recently) in SW Mongolia and adjacent Kansu, Sinkiang, and Inner Mongolia ( China). Domesticated worldwide; feral in Portugal, Spain, France, Greece, Iran, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Hispaniola, Canada, USA (incl. Hawaiian Isis), Galapagos and probably other oceanic islands.

STATUS: CITES - Appendix I and U.S. ESA - Endangered as Equus przewalskii ; IUCN - Extinct? as E. przewalskii .

SYNONYMS: ferus , gmelini , gutsenensis, hagenbecki, przewalskii , silvatica, silvestris.

COMMENTS: Horses have been assigned to two different species, E. caballus (including ferus and gmelini ) and E. przewalskii , but recent authors include przewalskii in caballus ; see Corbet (1978c:194), Groves (1974a), and Bennett (1980). Groves (1971 b) and Corbet (1978c: 194) proposed that ferus replace caballus , objecting to the use of specific names based on domestic animals. Gromov and Baranova (1981:333-334) continued to recognize two species, gmelini and przewalskii .